The Gallia christiana [GC] is an extremely useful but sometimes
unreliable source. For the most part put together in the eighteenth
century by highly learned and pioneering scholars, its lists of
bishops and abbots of France are still used because they are often all
we have. Given how many more sources have become available, however,
it is possible now for scholars to produce much fuller and more
accurate histories of French churches.

In recent decades there have thus been several projects undertaken to
provide new reference works, intended to replace the GC and other
eighteenth- through early twentieth-century scholarly efforts. (No
one, however, is undertaking to print, as the GC did, the primary
source documents the editors considered the most important for each
diocese.) The "Series episcoporum ecclesiae catholicae occidentalis,"
or "new Gams" as it is often called, first appeared in 1982. It gives
detailed lists of bishops who held office before the year 1198, but so
far has produced only a small number of volumes for dioceses in
Germany, Britain, and Scandinavia, none yet concerning France.

The "Fasti ecclesiae Gallicanae," on the other hand, focuses
exclusively on France in the later Middle Ages, beginning with the
year 1200. Unlike the GC, it is not concerned with ecclesiastics
other than the bishops, the cathedral officers, and the canons. There
is no information here on monasteries, nunneries or other religious
houses, although the listing of cathedral canons is very thorough
(unlike GC). The first volume appeared in 1995, and subsequent
volumes have been appearing every year or so, each covering one
diocese. They have appeared in no particular order, as the different
scholars undertaking the project have completed their work; the series
editor calls this a "mosaic" pattern (viii). So far the series has
produced volumes for Amiens, Rouen, Reims, Besançon, Agen, Rodez,
Angers, Mende, Sées, Poitiers, Sens, and now Autun. (The next
promised volume is Châlons-en-Champagne.)

Like the other books in the series, the Autun volume is primarily a
listing, not a monograph. Fifty pages are devoted to three centuries
of bishops of Autun; each has a page or two, with information on his
family and career, followed by a list of sources, both primary and
secondary. The bulk of the book, however, over three hundred pages,
is given to the canons of Autun. They are listed alphabetically by
first name, and for each a few words are given on their background and
career, such as it can be found in the sources--which for most means
very little. The list of canons is completed by a list of "clercs
exclus," men who tried to join the cathedral chapter but were not
successful.

Contrasting with the rather dry list of canons and dignitaries is a
long section at the beginning which gives an overview of the history
of the diocese of Autun, before as well as after 1200, including the
layout of the city and the cathedral quarter, the famous Romanesque
church of St.-Lazare--which however was not originally the cathedral--
the cathedral treasury, and such interesting information as the books
now in the municipal library which were known to have been in the
cathedral library before the French Revolution. This introductory
section, some one hundred pages, is an excellent place to start for
anyone studying medieval Autun.

The volume, like the rest of the series, impresses with the
thoroughness of the research that led to the identification of nearly
a thousand clerics. Excluding the highly unlikely discovery of
unknown archives, it will be the ultimate reference work enumerating
the men who served in the late medieval cathedral of Autun. And yet
at the same time the volume (again like the rest of the series)
frustrates because it is difficult to use.

The bishops and canons are each assigned an index number, intended to
identify them in a data base, but no details are given on exactly how
a number was assigned or, for that matter, what purpose it serves.
The bishops, who appear first in the volume, start not with number 1
as one might have expected but with number 297. Overall, no one is
assigned a number smaller than 201. In general the numbers are
assigned alphabetically by first name (bishops and canons alphabetized
together), but there are inexplicable anomalies. For example,
everyone from 910 to 941 is a Johannes--except for 919, who is
Ferricus. Another group of men also named Johannes are given the
numbers 544 to 651, with one Innocentius in their midst (at number
584). The indices to cognomina and to diocesesan cities in which the
Autun clerics might function refer to people by their numbers, but
given the way that numbers were assigned it is then sometimes
difficult to find the person in question, or even to know whether to
look for him among the bishops or the canons. Searching for someone
by index number in a computer data base would of course be easy, but
this is a book, not a computer file.

The bibliography is also hard to use. There is not one list but
multiple ones, brief bibliographies for most of the short introductory
sections at the beginning of the volume, and then a more comprehensive
one divided among works on Autun, works on Burgundy, studies of
cathedral canons, "general" works, reference works, and so on. One
would also not know from looking over the bibliographies that anyone
had ever published on Autun in a language other than French. Just one
example of a serious omission is Linda Seidel's study of the
construction and sculpture of the church of St.-Lazare.[1]

The most useful part of the book is the list of bishops, with
information on their background, election, and notable
accomplishments. Indeed, one wishes that this section could have been
much longer. Few scholars, on the other hand, will find reason to
consult the list of canons, which can usually give little more detail
than that a canon appeared in a document in a certain year, or is
known to have had a house in the cathedral close. This is rather too
bad, given how much work must have gone into assembling the list. The
book, like the rest of the series, will find a home in most research
libraries, but we are still very far from replacing the GC.

--------

Notes:

1. Linda Seidel, Legends in Limestone: Lazarus, Gislebertus, and
the Cathedral of Autun (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1999).